Canadian prints and drawings after 1950

Prints and drawings made by Canadian artists after 1950 account for the most significant portion of the gallery’s collection. The collection and exhibition of Canadian prints has been of particular importance. From 1969 to 1974, Carleton University hosted the Canadian Printmakers’ Showcases, a series of exhibitions and sales. Although Carleton University started collecting art earlier, in the mid-1960s, annual purchases from these exhibitions make up the core of the print collection.

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Michael Bell, CUAG’s founding director, secured donations of “collections of record” from numerous printmakers in order to document the full extent of their work and their contribution to Canadian printmaking. Among the artists who have donated such collections are Hugh Mackenzie, Rita Letendre, John Hartman, Leslie Reid, Fran Jones, Frederick Hagan, and Julius Griffith.

Other Canadian printmakers – including several based in Ottawa – are represented by major bodies of work, notably Vera Frenkel, Jennifer Dickson, Jacques Hurtubise, Armand Vaillancourt, Susan Geraldine Taylor, Oliver Girling, Otis Tamasauskas, Stanley Lewis, Russell Yuristy, Carl Heywood, and Robert Creighton. Most of these were received as donations.

This extensive body of prints is accompanied by a comparably rich selection of Canadian drawings in which, again, the emphasis is on in-depth documentation of individual artists’ oeuvres. This has enabled CUAG to present solo exhibitions drawn mainly from its collection. Such shows have featured the work of Ron Bloore, Ken Lochhead, Duncan de Kergommeaux, Carl Beam, Joe Rosenblatt, John Heward, and Ron Martin. Other artists whose drawings are featured in depth in the collection include Claude Breeze, Lyn Donoghue, Richard Gorman, Oliver Girling, Karen Kulyk, Jean-Marie Delavalle, Hilda Woolnough, and William Ronald.